Tag Archives: Online Community

Tim Oâ€™Reilly, creator of the Web 2.0 meme, says that organizations have been slow to understand how â€œnetwork effectsâ€ can benefit their business if applied internally as well as externally. Just watching/listening to this video podcast (link) in the first few 3-4 minutes of a 15 minute interview, and O’Reilly says something key for us as a church: Enterprises have these Continue Reading

I just realized that in using Windows Live Writer, and clicking on my “BlogIt” button while viewing the page titled “Becoming the Authentic Church”, LiveWriter creates a new post with the title “[Post Title] at Theoblogical”, thus creating a post with the title of “Becoming the Authentic Church at Theoblogical”, which communicates something I know to be utterly false and misleading. I cannot, no matter how Continue Reading

Is the Reformation Over? This event in KC is tempting. I’d love to get over there. I’m mulling it over. If I can land a reasonable place to stay, I may take the plunge. I just got Hauerwas’ Brazos Press Press Commentary on Matthew yesterday. It would be fun to finally meet face to face with my friend Eric, Continue Reading

I pointed earlier this week to this interview with Howard Rheingold, whose seminal work, The Virtual Community (1993), was the first to explore the realities and possibilities of online community. His later work, Smart Mobs (2002) followed this trend into the world of mobile gadgets and future possibilities for ubiquitous computing scattered everywhere. This interview is a very general question Continue Reading

I’ve been reading TallSkinnyKiwi since Gavin pointed it out……and things like this (along with the great post in which it is set) are among the insightful pieces I often find there, particularly on the possibilities for Church and Web, as this item illustrates: Blogs can allow different groups who never get together physically to converse and discover new things about Continue Reading

It seems that passions are needed for something OTHER than being hip, and doing blogs. It’s like churches saying “Hey, we’re a people church”. OK. How is that demonstrated? Maybe by, uh…..really highlighting WHO these people are. Hopefully, as witnesses to a Kingdom into which we have been called as participants, the things that these people deem important are centered Continue Reading

Good question from Howard Rheingold Howard Rheingold said, to this question, “I love to read” does that make me a “reading addict”. Howard was challenging the notion that Internet Life can be addictive. Source: Smart Mobs: The Future of the Internet II Pew Study When valuable, reflective, helpful conversation is so rare (if you’re like me, not having found a Christian Continue Reading

Many have observed how so many people we encounter today are literally absent from their surroundings, talking on their cellphone to someone else who is somewhere else. It’s perfectly understandable. Why not converse with someone we want to talk to while doing or going somewhere else that we are not wanting to be or do, or have to do as Continue Reading

On this day, 5 years ago, interesting that this was the day lots of people said blogging really hit the radar as a significant communication: Wired News: 9/11: Birth of the Blog While phone networks and big news sites struggled to cope with heavy traffic, many survivors and spectators turned to online journals to share feelings, get information or detail Continue Reading

A commenter on the post on the Naked Conversations blog has an interesting point about how Digg may get better at telling “people like me” what the world is thinking about. That raises another question: what world? We need filters or “sub-worlds”, thus my previous post. Naked Conversations: Why I don’t dig Digg I think that Digg is more useful Continue Reading

Shel Israel (co-author with Scoble on Naked Conversations) has an interesting observation on Digg that should suggest to the church or its supporting organizations that “finding what is relevant” is for us, certainly NOT likely to be found in mass culture. While it is certainly useful to KNOW what mass culture is interested in, from the perspective of church people, Continue Reading

After posting this morning on how the church has abandoned its call to be an “alternative”; a reflection of and expression of the truth as revealed by God in Christ; I ask myself again the question about what “Real life” is; or what “the real world” is. This designaiton is used a lot in contrasting online activity with “real life” Continue Reading

Eric has alerted us to a new site , with Blog, hosted by Geoff Holsclaw and James KA Smith the church and postmodern culture: conversation: Why churchandpomo.org? And if we want to prop up a “big tent,” we also see ourselves as only a small part of a bigger universe of conversations that we eagerly listen in on: such as Continue Reading

I want to post about a comment thread from which I have quoted the entirety of my latest comment on a thread begun when Eric questioned (rightly, I think) my bold but somewhat blustery assertion that “it’s not a blog if there are no comments” Without Comments, itâ€™s not a Blog at Theoblogical I suppose that in a sense, this Continue Reading

One major area which keeps me absent from churches these days: lack of dilalogue about war, and what to do as a a people to “stand apart” from this; even OTHER than attending mass demonstrations. What proclaims PEACE other than carrying signs that say PEACE or countering the nationalistic yard signs or by utting up “PEACE” or “No War” yard Continue Reading